The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent the work is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
In current synchronous design of integrated circuits, critical paths determine performance of a system, and the most critical path in a system determines the speed of the system. Critical paths are often difficult to design to achieve an aggressive target. Significant efforts and resources are invested to optimize those critical paths, even though some of them are seldom active in operation.